The corporate globalization project

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A recent German television news spot on the fledgling EU-U.S. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership blows up the myth of massive job growth and higher wages from a free trade deal. (See video capture below with subtitles courtesy Corporate Europe Observatory.) Director of European trade policy, Karel De Gucht, is speechless (around minute 6:30) when presented with the findings of his own Commission report on the TTIP showing per annum GDP growth of only 0.05 per cent under the most "ambitious" (liberalized) result. "Let us interrupt (the interview)," he says, asking "Is that the study that we have commissioned? Can I see it?" The comical situation is depressingly familiar. The Harper government only has about five things to say when talking about its still unfinished Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the EU. One of them is that the deal, if it’s ever signed and ratified, would be worth $12 billion to the Canadian economy. That low figure was, to begin with, conjured out of wishful thinking, and has since been cut in half by other studies.